Young Chet and other recent poems

by Gerald Locklin. Pudding House Publications Chapbook Series. 2002. Pudding House Publications, 60 North Main Street, Johnstown, Ohio, 43031.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

The other day I was taking a walk, as has become my custom. You see, I must take weight off, eat vegetables (raw without butter and salt!), and all that bow-wow, woof woof. And I came upon some shards of plastic drinking cup, which I dreamed once held some very cheap draft street picnic beer. And as I looked closer, the shards seemed to become stick figures of people and then ghosts and then they became full fleshed figures, as mush as flattened plastic drinking cups can become full fleshed figures and art. Art was what I was left with as I wandered away. (Lucky I did cause as I gazed upon the flattened shards of plastic I heard a couple guys sitting on a porch say, “Look at that crazy asshole.” So as I walked I understood how finding stuff like Yoko Ono did and does, how everything is art as you come upon it and find it and it is the spinning off of whatever one encounters that makes everything art and that we live totally in art if we are artists or get into the rare rhythm of the artist’s mind, where, yeah, everything is art. And if you are a poet then everything becomes poetry. Wow I said as I read this new book by Gerald Locklin. Wow this in fact is the highest and bestest poetry there could ever be. Here I have encountered an artist of the greatest caliber. Locklin is artist as everywhere. Damn! I was so happy that the door to my enlightenment came from a plastic beer cup, squished. I think Ger would like that notion. And to those guys on the porch, “kiss my ripe rotten butt.”